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Kings igniter Kopitar deflects high praise: Arthur

LOS ANGELES—It was Game 1 when the appreciation of Anze Kopitar hits its zenith, since being sainted is difficult to beat. Wayne Gretzky was on Hockey Night in Canada before the Stanley Cup final started, and a beatification was at hand.

“I think Anze Kopitar, right now, is the third-best player in the National Hockey League, only behind (Sidney) Crosby and (Jonathan) Toews, and he’s getting better every game,” said Gretzky. “To me, Kopitar’s the guy. He plays defensively, he takes all the key faceoffs, he can get the big goal and make big plays offensively.

“I think this series could revolve around him. If he plays the way he can play, it’s going to be tough for the Rangers to combat that.”

Kopitar is not what you’d call a talker. He is humble, quiet, subdued. Told about Gretzky’s comment, the Los Angeles Kings centre was suitably low-key and bashful about it. Well, sort of.

“I’ll take any compliment from that guy,” Kopitar said the next day. “Even if he said I was the fifth in the rankings, I would have taken it. It’s obviously very nice to hear things about that.”

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Wait a minute. Fifth? Wayne Gretzky dubbed him a podium player in a league full of great players, and Kopitar kicked the dirt, said aw-shucks, and said gee, thanks, I would even have been OK with being ranked in the top five. Huh.

Kopitar has long been an under-appreciated player, to the point where he gets talked about enough for the label to fade. He has never quite been a point-a-game player, but is a possession machine who, over the last three years, has been on the ice for 59.9 per cent of all available shot attempts at even strength. It’s a staggering number; over that span, he’s 0.4 per cent behind Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, another purist’s two-way star. Kopitar, like Bergeron, vastly improves every teammate’s possession numbers, as well.

And for the old-school stats, Kopitar led the Kings in playoff scoring in 2012, and was leading them heading into a potential Cup-clinching Game 5 in Los Angeles Friday night, with 26 points in his first 25 playoff games. The Kings, for their part, seem to appreciate him properly.

“I think Kopi busts his ass every night, for lack of a better word,” said Kings coach Darryl Sutter. “Kopi played more minutes, (bigger) minutes than anybody on our team. In crucial situations he does it. He never has a bad game.”

“If he was a Canadian and played in New York, (there would) probably be more people talking about him,” said Kings captain Dustin Brown.

“He has the puck on his stick so much during the game,” said teammate Jarret Stoll. “I know for my game, I wish I had it on my stick more, and I don’t have it on my stick that much. But he probably has it on his stick the most, him and probably (Drew Doughty). And he always makes a good play with it. The play never dies with him.

“He sees the plays before they’re happening, and he makes them, and he doesn’t just make the average play, he makes tougher plays. He’ll make that pass through a seam or through a couple sticks. He can play hard and battle down below our goal line.

“So he really is the full package. It’s too bad people don’t talk about him that much, until we get to the conference finals and the Stanley Cup finals.”

And yet going into Game 5 against New York Kopitar was probably behind Doughty and Justin Williams in the race for the Conn Smythe, and was probably close to Jeff Carter. He hasn’t dominated the final, points-wise, even as his possession numbers have been stellar. He is finding a way to be under-appreciated again, just a little.

And while he may say he’s fine with that, that reply to Gretzky disagrees. Kopitar left Slovenia to play in Sweden at age 16. Slovenia has seven rinks now; it likely had fewer then. And still, he dreamed big enough to leave. Why?

“I wasn’t really scared,” said Kopitar. “I think my family back home was more concerned about whether I was going to pan out, but not on the ice. It’s how the life was going to be, and being so far away.

“But I only had one goal in life, and that was to take the next step in hockey, and that’s what drove me. And I didn’t really care how my apartment looked like in Sweden. For me, it was about having everything at the rink, and if my skates were feeling good.

“I just want to be the best I can be, and I think that’s pretty much all you need to be driven like that. And more often than not, if you’re driven like that, you’re going to succeed.”

And that’s what burns in the quiet part of Kopitar. He was always competitive, because his father was competitive; he would compete with his brother, who was five years younger. He would jump in to talk to Swedish teammates as a teenager, even in English, to show he understood. Kopitar started this voyage in an airport, about to leave his family to chase the game, trying to take the next step. The staircase never really ends.

“The goals are always higher,” says Kopitar. “You try to make the playoffs for the first time. You try to win the Cup for the first time. You try to build on those things. Now, to be up for a (Selke) award (as the league’s best two-way forward) . . . when it’s all said and done, whether it happens or not, it’s a nice achievement.”

The Kings had a chance to win a second Stanley Cup in three years Friday night; no team has done that since the Detroit Red Wings went back-to-back, 16 years ago. Anze Kopitar would probably be satisfied for a while, for a little bit. And then the staircase will beckon, and he’ll resume the climb.

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